JACOB BOEHME:

A LEXICON OF HIS TERMINOLOGY

By Wayne Kraus

Lexicon 3 was written some 8 years ago as an aid to facilitate the study of Jacob Boehme. Lexicon 4 is a private notebook which, I just realized, is immeasurably more useful than the one I wrote in an effort to be “helpful.” It offers no dictionary definitions or conceptual explanations. Speculative reasoners will find this Lexicon as frustrating as the writings themselves.

Like Ezekiel and John, Jacob Boehme strains the boundaries of language to describe his spiritual visions and makes constant use of symbols. If the meaning of a symbol could be fully explained, we would skip symbols and go straight to the explanations. We can explain the way from here to the corner store without resorting to symbols. We cannot explain the way from here to eternity without the use of symbol, image, parable, myth, poetry, analogy.

Truth may take root in our innermost being and yet remain beyond the grasp of reason. “The heart hath reasons that reason knoweth not.” (Pascal) The Bible itself says this.

“The love of Christ which passes knowledge.”

“Joy inexpressible and full of glory.”

“Peace that passes understanding.”

“The love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit.”

“God who commanded light to shine out of darkness has shone in our hearts.”

“If anyone thinks they know something, they know nothing yet as they ought to know it, but if anyone loves God, this one is known by Him.”

Boehme’s epistemology is quite straightforward: “It is not I, the I that I am, that knows these things; it is God knowing in me.”

Intellect is the moon, which can only reflect beams from the central sun of the heart. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding.”

Philosophy is “Love of Sophia,” divine wisdom.

Boehme reminds us repeatedly that reason is a blind guide. It is a function of the animal body and can do nothing more than serve its own interests. Nietzsche observed that academic “philosophy” is no more than a post priori rationalization for the class interests of philosophy professors. Ontology precedes epistemology. Objectivity recapitulates subjectivity.

The discovery that reason is not the vehicle but the obstacle is the philosopher’s pons asinorum – the “Bridge of Asses.” It is the hardest thing to get over, but once we “go out from reason,” as JB says, forward progress begins.

Reason is the false self, the deranged monkey that clambers around as we try to meditate, study and pray, “the dark reasoning spectre which negatives every thing,” “the old man which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts,” “the outer man which is perishing.”

Lexicon 3 had too much of the whiff of reason about it. This lexicon is better than the last precisely because it lacks rational structure and authoritative definitions and explanations.

Each of us is a singular facet of the Divine Image. Only the Truth that resonates with your innermost being is Truth for you. If the meanings you give to these words and symbols differs from mine, trust your own and discard mine.

GLOSSARYAbyss, Byss, Unground and Ground, eternity and time-space, conscious and unconscious. (Ger. Ungrund, Grund) An infinity in which exists only the Three Principles, the undifferentiated All, the Everynothing, the eternal liberty before nature and creature, the primordial condition of all being and therefore without substance, natures, or qualities; the eternal silence, the All and the No-thing; neither darkness nor light; manifest to none, not even to Himself. This principle of all things, the divine, unlimited, indivisible existence or ultimate unity, in its desire for self-expression or manifestation, the Ungrund (Unground). “And because it is nothing respectively, it is therefore free from all things; and is that only good, which a man cannot express or utter what it is; there being nothing to which it may be compared, to express it by.” See The Signature of All Things, Mysterium Magnum.

The Byss proceeds from the Abyss “so the Nothing might be known in the Something, and that it might have a sport in its contrary will, that the free

will of the abyss might be manifest to itself in the byss, for without evil and good there could not be any byss [ground or foundation].”

Anguish, is the third Form of the seven Properties of Eternal Nature, made of the first two Forms, and making a Sulphurous Spirit.

Antichrist, If I should describe Antichrist, I could not demonstrate him otherwise, than that he calleth himself a Christian, and covers himself with Christ’s Purple-Mantle; & acknowledgeth and teacheth Christ with the Mouth; but his Heart is altogether set against Christ, he teacheth one thing and doth another; outwardly, he calleth himself a Christian, and inwardly he is a Serpent; he persecuteth Christ in his Members, and resisteth the Spirit of Christ; he flattereth and playeth the Hypocrite, and will be honoured in Christ’s Name, but is inwardly a devouring Wolf; as Christ calleth the Pharisees, who sat upon Moses’ Seat, and managed the Law, Matt. 7:15j; But Christ said, they were from beneath, from the Father of the World, viz. from the Devil, John 8:23, 24. Eesponse to Richter 72

Astrology, Kepler visited Gorlitz in 1607 and may have met Boehme - the first astronomer meets the last astrologer. He was also contemporary with Galileo, inventor of the scientific method, and though the two lead in different directions, they both lead away from the notion that the representations of the five senses constitute “reality.” Boehme did not practice divination or horoscope readings but did follow the Hermetic principle, “As above, so below.” The seven planets were manifestations of the seven forms of nature, which are manifested on every level of reality, from the atom to the human body to the cosmos to deity itself. Though JB obviously follows traditional associations, it is best to follow the “law of context” to understand what he meant by Mercurius, Saturn, Sola, etc., rather than consulting external sources.

Byss, see Abyss

Cabala/Kaballah, Cabala-words, magia-phenomenon. Cabala is epistemology (theory of knowledge), magia is ontology (theory of being). Cabala is purely Jewish, cannot be separated from Judaism, and should not be understood as an occult science, though it is marketed as such by the New Age industry and denounced as such by the Christian clergy.

Centrum or Center, is the inward Ground. Laws of nature before energy or “matter.”

Centrum Naturae, the first beginning to nature, viz. the most inward ground, wherein the self-raised will brings itself, by a reception, into a something, viz. into a natural working; for nature is but a tool and instrument of God, which God's power and virtue works with, and yet it has its own motion from the outflown will of God: thus the center is the point or ground of the own receivingness to somethingness; from whence something comes to be, and from thence the seven properties proceed.

Christ, the inward new Man in the Spirit of Christ. See Incarnation.

Divine Unity, is Deity before manifestation; like a candle that produces Fire (Father), Light (Son) and Air (Spirit).

Element, called the one or holy Element, is of or according to the second Principle generated eternally out of the eternal Nature or great Mystery, which are according to the First, but wherever they generated the holy Element there is paradise.

Ens, the proper or peculiar Being or Essence of a thing, particularly in terms of moral orientation, either benevolence or malignancy. In Deity the Ens is “The holy Power of Light and Love,” as opposed to “the ens of the Serpent.” The ens is the desire of a property and out of the same ens in the formed nature the Word becomes a creatural life. The ens that tinctures our speech is more than the content. “Lies spoken in hypocrisy” are no worse than “truth spoken in hypocrisy.”

14 For every word of man proceeds from an eternal ens; either from the ens of God’s love, or from the ens of God’s anger; and if now it be brought forth out of the ens, viz. out of its own place or mother, it will have again a place of its rest, wherein it may work.

15. Now if it cannot take rest and work in its likeness, outside the wicked man, (who has awakened and brought it forth out of his ens, and introduced it into a sound, or wordy substance), then it catches or surrounds its expressor [or author] who has brought it into a substance, and enters again with its root into its mother whence it did arise; that is, with the enkindled spirit, and with the substance (of its contrived matter) it does lay hold of and apprehend the inventor’s [expressor] body; viz. the outward essence of the outward sulphur.

16. For every word, when it is expressed, is outwardly made and formed; for in the expressing or pronouncing thereof the outward spirit, viz. the outward part of the soul, receives it to its own substance; and afterwards, being

enkindled in the wrath, and infected by the devil in its coming forth, in its witty glancing subtlety of the Serpent, does enter again into the soul and body of the monstrous image; and works according to its property, enkindled and infected by the devil, and continually brings forth such evil fruits and words: as we plainly see that out of many a wicked mouth nothing but vanity proceeds.

See Mysterium Magnum chapter 21.

“The kingdom of God is not in word but in power (ens).” (1 Cor. 4:20)

Essence, (See “Science” first) Yet in the understanding, in which it is called Science, it is not the sensing, but a cause of the sensing, in that manner as when the understanding impresses [manifests] itself in the mind, there must first be a cause which must give [bring forth] the mind, from which the understanding flows forth into its contemplation: Now this Science is the root to the fiery mind, and it is in short the root of all spiritual beginnings; it is the true root of souls, and proceeds through every life, for it is the ground from whence life comes.

I could not give it any other better name, this does so wholly accord and agree in the sense; for the Science is the cause that the divine abyssall will compacts and impresses itself in tonature, to the separable [various], intelligible, and perceivable life of understanding and difference; for from the impressure of the Science, whereby the will attracts it into itself the natural life arises, and the word of every life originally.

The distinction or separation out of the fire is to be understood as follows: The eternal Science in the will of the Father draws the will, which is called Father, into itself, and shuts itself into a center of the divine generation of the Trinity, and by the Science speaks itself forth into a word of understanding; and in the speaking is the separation in the Science; and in every separation there is the desire to the impressure of the expression, the impressure is essential, and is called divine essence.

From this essence the word expresses itself in the second separation, that is, of nature, and in that expression (wherein the natural will separates itself in its center, into a preception [sensing?]), the separation out of the fiery Science is understood; for thence comes the soul and all angelical spirits.

The third separation is according to the outward nature of the expressed formed word, wherein the bestial Science lies, as may be seen in the treatise

of the Election of Grace, which has a sharp understanding, and is one of the clearest of our writings.

Eternal Nature, is of the first Principle and that in which standeth two Kingdoms; one the pure Virgin Wisdom of God, the one holy Element, the cause of the four Elements and the Stars: The other, the severe fierce wrath: According to which God calleth himself a consuming Fire. It is therefore the great Mystery. Nature is nothing but the properties of the receivingness of the own arisen desire; which desire arises in the variation of the breathing word (that is, of the breathing power and virtue), wherein the properties bring themselves into substance; and this substance is called a natural substance, and is not God himself.

For though God dwells through and through nature, yet nature comprehends him but so far as the Unity of God yields itself into, and communicates itself with, a natural substance, and makes itself substantial, viz. a substance of light, which works by itself in nature, and pierces and penetrates nature; or else the Unity of God is incomprehensible to nature, that is, to the desirous receivingness.

Nature arises in the outflown word of the divine perception and knowledge; and it is a continual framing and forming of sciences and perception: whatsoever the word works by the wisdom, that nature frames and forms into properties: Nature is like a carpenter, who builds a house, which the mind figured and contrived before in itself; so it is here also to be understood.

Whatsoever the eternal mind figures in the eternal wisdom of God in the divine power, and brings into an idea, that, nature frames into a property.

Nature, in its first ground, consists in seven properties; and these seven divide themselves into infinite.

Expressed word, all Creatures visible and invisible.

Fiat, the Eternal speaking Word or Creating Power proceeding from the Freewill of the Abyss. Also the desire of the Soul taking the Power of the holy Love Tincture, and makes it essential. “Let there be…”

Flagrat, or sudden fright, shriek, terror, flash, the severing of the two Principles of Light and Darkness; resembling that in Thunder and Lightning, Gunpowder, etc. The pregnant Echo of the sound of Eternity, speaking (by the Magical Fire-breath) Love, or Anger; Life, in the Light; Death, in the

Darkness. The Third Principle. The Fourth Property. “The Word in the German is Schra'ck, which signifies properly a Fright, sudden Astonishment, or Dismay. In the other Books it is translated Terror, or Crack, but I have put it Flagrat, from the Latin Word Flagro, though I mean not by it only a Burning, but even the powerful Opening of the Life or Death of the Enkindling of the Fire in Nature. For the Fire is the dividing Bound-mark, in which the Life of both Principles is opened and separated; the Life of the first is the dying Death in the Darkness, and the Life of the second is the living Life in the Light. You may perceive a resemblance of this Flagrat in Thunder and Lightening, as also in Gunpowder, and the like. Take for instance divers sulphureous salnitral Minerals exactly mixed, now their Powers are as I may say contracted, or shut up in the astringent dark Desire or Death; but touch them rightly with the true Fire, and you will see how they will soon open, disclose, and flash forth, and will even display and stream themselves forth into divers Properties, Colours, and Virtues. It is even the bursting forth of the ardent Desire in Nature. It is, as I may term it, the magical Fire-breath, whereby the Powers either of Light or Darkness are dismayed. In short, it is the pregnant Echo of the Sound of Eternity everywhere speaking, working, and opening itself in Love or Anger, in each Thing according to its Will and Desire: In some it is the horrible Flagrat to Death; and in others it is the pleasant triumphant Flagrat to Life.” (Ellistone)

Incarnation, the becoming-man (menschwerdung) of Jesus Christ.

Christ shineth in every corner and chink of his Incarnation, or being man, even to eternity: seek not after one place more than after another, he is everywhere; for where the carcase is, thither the eagles gather together: Christ is everywhere, and his children can come to him everywhere, and when we enter into Christ, then we are with our carcase, and satiate ourselves with his flesh, and drink of his blood; for he said, My flesh is the true food, and my blood is the true drink, they that eat of my flesh and drink of my blood continue in Me, and I in them.

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, must become man, and be born in you, if you will know God: otherwise you are in the dark stable, and go about groping and feeling, and look always for Christ, at the right hand of God, supposing that he is a great way off; you cast your mind aloft above the stars and seek God, as the sophisters teach you, who represent God as one afar off, in heaven. If you would find him, seek him in his source or property, which is everywhere; all is full of God, and he shineth in the darkness; God is in your dark heart, though in another Principle; knock, and it shall be opened unto

you; the Holy Spirit of God is the key in the centre: go out from the desire of the flesh, in a true earnest repentance, and put all your will, reason, and thoughts into the mercy of God; and so the Word of God (viz. his beloved Heart) will get a form in you: and then you stand before the crib where Jesus is born: and then incline yourself towards the Child, and offer him your heart, and Christ will be born in you.”

If it could possibly have been that God might have taken away Adam's sin in such a manner, God had not needed to become man, and so have brought us into God again: He might rather have forgiven Adam his sin, as a prince pardoneth a murderer: No, you yourself must go out from sin, and enter into the will of God; for God doth not stand by as a king, and forgive sins with words: It must be power: You must go out from the fire into the light; for God is no image for us to stand before, and give good words to, but he is a spirit, and penetrateth through the heart and reins, that is, soul and spirit: He is the fire of love, and his centre of nature is the fire of anger; and if you were in hell among all the devils, yet then you are in God, for the anger is also his, it is his abyss; and therefore when you go out from that, you go into the love of God, into the liberty that is without source [or pain].

Language of Nature, See Signature. Each thing – a bird, flower, tree, stone, air, star, principle, property or law of nature - speaks a word, and the word is its signature. The sound in the “language of nature” tells us about its quality and property. That is why Boehme is always breaking down words, “SUL is the soul, PHUR is the prima materia…” MER is attraction, CU resistance, both caught up in RI, the whirling generative wheel, US is the swift fire-flash – hence Mercurius is the first four properties of nature. The first syllable generates subsequent syllables, which express the power or virtue of the first.

Limbus, the male counterpart of the female Matrix. Seed or concretion of Nature. Substantiality. “Two Sexes sprung out of one Essence; the one according to the Limbus in the Form of Fire, and the other according to. the Aquaster [or Spirit of the Water] in the watery Form; yet so [blended or] mixed, that they were alike as to the Body. And so the Male was qualified according to the Limbus, or Form of Fire, and the Female according to the Aquaster in the watery Form.” (TP 8:38-42) If this is a borrowing from the Latin “limbus,” it must be according to the Language of Nature, and not the dictionary definition, which is edge or border, “Limbo.”

“3. For after the Fall God said also to Adam and Eve; Earth thou art, and to Earth thou shalt return again: And if I had not considered the Limbus, (out of which the Earth was,) I should have been so blind still: That [Limbus] showed me the Ground of what Adam was before and after the Fall.” TP 10:3

Used 67 times, in TP, once in next book TFL.

Limus, the mineral earth, tainted by the ens of the serpent. Boehme is very close to the Gnostic and Manichean doctrine that matter is inherently corrupt.

Lubet, a Longing Delight or Beneplacitum; In God, it is the free pregnant Will to Manifestation in Nature and Creature; without which all had been an Eternal stillness. The Lubet in Man, is the moving Will to Good or Evil. Imagination, desire, magia. “The Word in the Dutch is Lust, which signifies a longing Desire or Will to a Thing; also a Delight, or contented Joy; sometimes Imagination and Lust. But because our Word Lust is commonly used in the worst Sense (a Longing after Evil and Vanity) and would not properly agree to, or fully express the German Word Lust in all places, I have generally translated it Lubet, from the Latin Word Lubitum, whereby is meant the divine Beneplacitum, or good Pleasure. By it is understood the Origin to a Desire in the eternal Nothing, or pregnant Magic, God's free Well-liking to the Desire of the Manifestation of Nature and Creature, without which all had been an eternal Stillness in the Nothing. This Lubet in Man is the moving Will to Good or Evil, Light or Darkness, Love or Anger.” (Ellistone)

Magia, derives from “mag,” an ancient word of unknown origin (possibly from the Iranian language Avestan), along with magus/magi, magic, magnitude, magnify, magnet, magnificent, magnanimous. Magia is knowledge of the hidden power, the chain of cause-and-effect not perceived by the five senses. The power is “the hidden working of the will.” See William Law’s The Way to Divine Knowledge 2:85ff.

In Boehme, divine magia is contrasted with “heathen magic.” “The natural magus has power only over nature.” One proceeds from God’s Spirit, the other from the “instigation, dominion and government of the stars.”

“3. With the Egyptians the magic art and skill was common. But when it was misused to witchcraft, it was extirpated; although it remained among the heathen till the kingdom of Christ, till the divine magia sprang up. Then the natural magia was suppressed among the Christians, which in the beginning was well that it was suppressed, for the heathenish faith was thereby allayed

and quenched; and the magic images of nature, which they honoured for gods, were rooted out of men's hearts.

4. But when the Christian faith was common, then came other magi up, viz. the sects in Christendom, which they set up for gods, instead of the images of heathen idols, and drove on greater delusions than the heathen with their magic idols.

5. For the heathen looked upon the ground of the possibility and working of nature. But these set themselves above the ground of nature, merely in a historical faith, and say that men ought to believe that which they contrive.

6. As at this very day titulary Christendom is full of such magi as have no natural understanding, either of God or of nature more among them, but only an empty babbling of a supernatural magic ground, wherein they have set up themselves for idol-gods, and understand neither the divine nor natural magia, so that the world is made stock blind by them. Whence the contention and strife in faith [and religion] is arisen, that men talk much of faith, one drawing this way, another that way, and make a multitude of opinions, which are altogether worse than the heathenish images, which indeed had their ground and foundation in nature. But these images have no ground, either in nature or in the supernatural divine faith, but are dumb idols, and their ministers are Baal's ministers.

7. And as it was highly necessary and good that the natural magia was discontinued amongst the Christians, where the faith of Christ was manifest: so now at present it is much more necessary that the natural magia were again manifest; that indeed titulary Christendom's idols which it makes to itself might, through nature, be made manifest and known, that man might know in nature the outspoken or expressed formed Word of God, as also the new regeneration, and also the fall and perdition. That thereby the contrived supernatural idols might be suppressed, that men might at length in nature learn to understand the Scriptures, seeing men will not confide in the spirit of God in the divine magia of true faith, but lay their foundation upon the tower of Babel, in the contention and contrived idol-opinions, viz. in the edicts and traditions of men.

8. I do not say that men should seek and preach the heathenish magia again, and take up heathen idols again, but that it is needful to learn to search the ground of nature, viz. the formed Word of God in love and anger, with its re-expression; that men might not be so blind concerning the essence of all essences.” Mysterium Magnum ch. 68:3-8

“There are two Magia’s, one of the Unity, the other of the Multiplicity, or Astral Powers. And two Magi in Man, the Spirit of God, and Reason, into the latter the Devil easily insinuates.” (Edward Taylor)

Magic, William Law: “And here, my Friend, you have an easy Entrance into the true Meaning of many important Passages in the Books of Jacob Behmen, like those that follow: All, says he, is magical; the Eternity is magical: Magic is the Mother of all Things. I speak from a magic Ground. Here the Reader must have magical Eyes. This hath a magical Understanding, &c. Vulgar Reason is offended at these Expressions, because the Word Magic has, for many Ages, been mostly used in a bad Sense. But don’t you be frighted at the Sound of these Words; they are not only innocent, but truly good and wise, and deeply founded on the Truth of Things. They have the most Christian and Divine Meaning; are strictly conformable to the Spirit of the Gospel; and are used for the best of Ends; namely, to open the true Ground of eternal and temporal Nature, and the Birth of Creatures in each of them. They are to show how the hidden, invisible Deity acteth and worketh all its Wonders in both these Worlds, in one and the same uniform Way; as also, how every thing in Religion, whether it be a Mystery of God, a Grace of God, or a Duty of Man, hath its whole Ground, and Nature and Efficacy, therein.”

Majesty, the Light of the Glorious Son of God, the second Principle, according to which only God is called God, for according to the First, viz., the Father’s Property, he is not called God, but a consuming Fire.

Matrix, the fruitful bearing womb of Eternity in the first and second principles. In the third principle the matrix is the web of life, the laws of nature, mother earth, the four elements (TP ch. 8). Matrix, matter, material, matrimony all derive from the Latin mater (mother).

“All that has been born in this third Principle continues eternally in the Matrix. And if a Man has in this Lifetime is not reborn into the second principle, then he shall remain eternally in the Matrix, yet not reach the Light of God. The Matrix is inanimate and void of Understanding, and in this World there is no true Understanding, either in the Stars, or in the Elements; and in all its Creatures there is only an Understanding of how to operate, to nourish itself, and to increase, in the matrix.” See The Three Principles ch. 5

“God generated the third Principle, that he might be manifested by the material World.” Matter is the mirror in which Deity sees himself, Sophia is the light of the mirror.

The Virgin Sophia (Divine Wisdom) stands in the same place as the Matrix but is not comprehended by it.

Mysterium Magnum, the Chaos out of which the Unity of God flows outward into Manifestation thru the Divine Wisdom. It is of the first Principle.

The Mysterium Magnum is a subject of the wisdom, where the breathing word, or the working willing power of the divine understanding, flows forth through the wisdom, wherein also the Unity of God together flows out, to its manifestation.

For in the Mysterium Magnum the eternal nature arises; and two substances and wills are always understood to be in the Mysterium Magnum: the first substance is the Unity of God, that is, the divine power and virtue, the outflowing wisdom.

The second substance is the separable will, which arises through the breathing and out-speaking word; which will has not its ground in the Unity, but in the mobility of the effluence and out-breathing, which brings itself into one will, and into a desire to nature, viz. into the properties as far as fire and light: in the fire the natural life is understood; and in the light the holy life, that is, a manifestation of the Unity, whereby the Unity becomes a love- fire, or light.

And in this place or working God calls himself a loving, merciful God, according to the sharpened fiery burning love of the Unity; and an angry jealous God, according to the fiery ground, according to the eternal nature.

The Mysterium Magnum is that chaos, out of which light and darkness, that is, the foundation of heaven and hell is flown, from eternity, and made manifest; for that foundation which we now call hell (being a Principle of itself), is the ground and cause of the fire in the eternal nature; which fire, in God, is only a burning love; and where God is not manifested in a thing, according to the Unity, there is an anguishing, painful, burning fire.

This burning fire is but a manifestation of the life, and of the divine love; by which the divine love, viz. the Unity, kindles up, and sharpens itself for the fiery working of the power of God.

This ground is called Mysterium magnum, or a chaos, because good and evil arise out of it, viz. light and darkness, life and death, joy and grief, salvation and damnation.

For it is the ground of souls and angels, and of all eternal creatures, evil as well as good; it is a ground of heaven and hell, also of the visible world, and all that is therein: therein have lain all things in one only ground, as an image lies hid in a piece of wood before the artificer does carve it out and fashions it.

Yet we cannot say that the spiritual world has had any beginning, but has been manifested from eternity out of that chaos; for the light has shone from eternity in the darkness, and the darkness has not comprehended it; as day and night are in one another, and are two, though in one.

I must write distinctly as if it had a beginning, for the better consideration and apprehension of the divine ground of the divine manifestation; and the better to distinguish nature from the Deity; also for the better understanding, from whence evil and good are come, and what the Being of all beings is.

Nature, arises in the outflown word of the divine perception and knowledge; and it is a continual framing and forming of sciences and perception: whatsoever the word works by the wisdom, that nature frames and forms into properties: Nature is like a carpenter, who builds a house, which the mind figured and contrived before in itself; so it is here also to be understood.

Out-birth, the visible, palpable, mortal part of this World called the Anger-fire.

Philosopher’s Stone, If we will speak of the Noble Stone and bring it into the light to be known, we must first show the darkness and deformity of the Stone which hinder its being known. The Philosopher’s Stone lies hidden in this world and may be had everywhere yet is not known; therefore, we should seek the reason why it is so hidden. The Stone lies in eternity; this Stone is Christ, the Son of the living God, which is discovered in all those that seek and find it. O how eagerly have the rational wise men of the schools of this world persecuted it at all times, and at this very day. They have a glittering stone with a pleasant outside or sound, and they think it is the right one. They boast of it and would be honored for it as gods. But their stone is only a stone belonging to the wall of the great building of this world. If they see a man who carries the Noble Stone in him, he must be a fool with them because they have the wit and subtlety of the serpent. They who have the

Stone are simple and without cunning. It is good to see with our own eyes, for he who sees with the eyes of another is always in doubt whether the spirit is true or false. Therefore, it is good to have the Noble Stone which gives assurance and exposes the false Magi. In this Stone there lies hidden whatever God and eternity, also heaven, the stars, and the elements contain and are able to do. There never was from eternity anything better or more precious than this, and it is offered by God and bestowed on man. Everyone may have it who desires it; it is in a simple form and has the power of the whole Deity in it. (Threefold Life ch. 7)

Property, is a Divine Idea manifest in Nature. Nature, in its first Ground, consists in Seven Properties, and these Seven interact and divide into Infinity. Each entity in Creation is a unique balance or Temperature of the original seven Properties. Man, bird, bear, fish and firefly are all the same thing, in their physical properties, with the properties in different proportions.

Propriety, egoity, I-ness, I-hood, ownness, a something,

Salitter, (called) Divine Salitter; represented by the Earth, but like the pure Heaven; in it are moving, springing Powers, producing all manner of Divine Trees, Plants, etc., with heavenly Colours, Smells, Tastes; whereof this World’s Trees, Gold, Silver, Precious Stones, etc., are hard, dark, dead Shadows. But this Salitter and Mercurius, (i.e.) Divine Mercurius, is the food of Angels and Holy Souls. the corporeal drying. Therein is the seed of the whole deity, and it receives the seed and generates the fruit according to the qualities of the seed. In another place he says: I call the Salitter of God, or the comprehensibility, wherein the heavenly figures or shapes arise. The seven qualifying or fountain spirits have their compacted or incorporated body out of nature, that is, out of the seventh nature-spirit in the divine power. Probably Boehme associated with sal or salt. (See “Sulphur, Mercury and Sal”)

Salniter, is that which in the Sulphur is awakened, by the heat arising into a Flagrat out of the Brimstony, Watery, and Earthy Properties, whereby the Properties are explicated.

Satan, “The Spirit of Error, and not always a Creaturely Devil, but the Property of such an Erroneous Spirit.” (Taylor)

Science, is the root to the understanding, as to the sensibility; it is the root to the center of the impression of nothing into something. It is the root to the fiery mind, and it is in short the root of all spiritual beginnings; it is the true

root of souls, and proceeds through every life, for it is the Grund from whence life comes. Scientia is often translated desire or attraction. 210.

The word Science is not so taken by me as men understand the word scientia in the Latin tongue; for I understand therein even the true ground according to sense, which, both in the Latin and all other languages is missed and neglected by ignorance; for every word in its impressure, forming, and expression, gives the true understanding of what that thing is that is so called.

You understand by Science some skill or knowledge, in which you say true, but do not fully express the meaning.

Science is the root to the understanding, as to the sensibility; it is the root to the center of the impressure of nothing into something; as when the will of the abyss attracts itself into itself, to a center of the impressure, viz. to the word, then arises the true understanding.

The will is in the separability of the Science, and there separates itself out from the impressed compaction; and men first of all understand the essence in that which is separated, in which the separability impresses itself into a substance.

For essence is a substantial power and virtue, but Science is a moving flitting one, like the senses; it is indeed the root of the senses. (Clavis)

The Seven Properties, The Seven Properties (or Forms, or Qualities) proceed from the Seven Spirits of God. (Rev. 4:5) The Three Principles are the logic or structure of the Divine Being and Creation; the Seven Properties are the Process or Motion. The three principles are noun; the seven properties are verb: attracting, resisting, whirling, exploding, shining, sounding, being.

Boehme goes to great lengths across many volumes to explicate this Process, which endlessly diversifies.

The diagram, devised by JB himself, is an amazingly concise summary of an infinitely complex process, a framework for fathoming an unfathomable Universe.

The First Property

The First property is the desire which causes and makes harshness, sharpness, hardness, cold, and substance. ATTRACTING

The Second Property

The Second property is the stirring or attraction of the desire; it makes stinging, breaking, and dividing of the hardness; it cuts asunder the attracted desire, and brings it into multiplicity and variety; it is a ground of the bitter pain, and also the true root of life; it is the Vulcan that strikes fire. RESISTING

The Third Property

The Third property is the perceptibility and feelingness in the breaking of the harsh hardness; and it is the ground of anguish,and of the natural will, wherein the eternal will desires to be manifested; that is, it will be a fire or light, viz. a flash or shining, wherein the powers, colors, and virtues of the wisdom may appear: in these three first properties consists the foundation of anger, and of hell, and of all that is wrathful. WHIRLING caused by the strife between the first two. The first three properties are the wheel of anguish that condition the birth of light and life. Think of a turbine that superheats and explodes. The explosion is the fourth property.

The Fourth Property

The Fourth property is the fire, in which the Unity appears, and is seen in the light, that is, in a burning love; and the wrath in the essence of fire. EXPLODING, FIREFLASH, SALNITRAL FLAGRAT

The insane movement of the wheel of anguish stops in order to transform itself into harmonious movement. It is now that life can be born, that God is born. “God, who commanded light to shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus.”

The Fifth Property

The Fifth property is the light, with its virtue of love, in and with which the Unity works in a natural substance. The second principle. SHINING, LOVE-LIGHT

The Sixth Property

The Sixth property is the sound, voice, or natural understanding, wherein the five senses work spiritually, that is, in an understanding natural life. SOUNDING, JOY

The Seventh Property

The Seventh property is the subject, or the contents of the other six properties, in which they work, as the life does in the flesh; and this seventh property is rightly and truly called the ground or place of nature, wherein the properties stand in one only ground. The third principal. BEING, BODY

The first three properties correspond to the first principle. These are the dark properties, the wheel of anguish, and the source of all life and motion. The fourth property is ignition, through which the three first break through into the world of light. The fourth property is the third principle, the material world where darkness and light interact and everything is an interchange of opposites. All phenomena are rhythmically balanced interchange of the seven principles. (See “Temperature”)

Any attempt at a thorough exegesis of the seven properties (or forms of nature) spirals off into an interminable prolixity. When unaided human reason essays to fathom the seven properties it finds itself upon the wheel of anguish described by the first three (dark) properties, since process infinitely fractally diversifies throughout a fathomless cosmos.

Signature, a broader word than “ens,” or perhaps that which proceeds from the ens. John J. Stoudt: “All things, including men, are known by their signatures, and by external manifestations in sound, form, voice and speech a thing’s hidden spirit is expressed. The signature is the expressed form of a being’s inner essence…Boehme’s signature is an epistemological and ontological key at the same time: a man’s face shows his inward self, and by it the self can be known. As a principle of knowledge it is neither inductive nor deductive but productive, the necessary basis of created being. The doctrine of signatures is antagonistic to reason: the scientist who describes, measures, classifies things is interested in repeatable similarities and separating distinctions. Boehme sought to understand nature from within without mathematics or logic because he held that meaning rested on the concordance of inner opening and external form. His symbol was the blooming lily.”

Sophia, the true noble precious Image of Christ, viz., the Wisdom of God, the Tincture of the Light. Divine Wisdom, mirror of God.

Source, the original quality or essential property to Love and Anger, Light and Darkness, both according to time and Eternity. “By this are meant the first original Qualities or Properties of both the inward Principles, as they break forth in the Sude of the Fire in the Flagrat of Love or Anger in Nature or Creature. For in the Darkness the Love-Ens, or Paradisical Light, is shut up in Death, and causes an austere dark Source, Pain, Horror, Torment, or Disquietude; and so it is the radical Property of the contentious Elements and Stars in the Curse of God: And in the Light the Life of Love breaks forth, and swallows up this wrathful Source of Darkness and Death, and turns it into Joy or a divine Source. So that by Source is understood the original Quality, Property, or Qualification of Evil, Darkness, Anger, Sorrow, Cursing, Damnation, Death, Hell; or the contrary to these in their divine Source, or essential working Property; both according to Time and Eternity.” (Ellistone)

Sude, is German, and signifies a boiling or seething. It is the stirring of the seven Properties in Nature, arising from the Assimulation or essential Coinfluence of the outward and inward Sol in Sulphur, from whence the blooming Vegetation of the Earth proceeds; also the Generation of Metals and Minerals lies therein.

Sulphur, Mercury and Sal, do not refer to brimstone, quicksilver and salt, but the Essences of these Properties, in which the created world consists and which correspond to the three first Properties. Sal is gravity, magnetism,

inertia, the will to unity, wholeness. Mercury is the motion and separation of Nature, wherein each thing is figured according to its own Signature. Sulphur is sensate, perceiving, willing and growing life. Sulphur signifies the Third Principle. In human nature, Mercury=spirit, Sulphur=soul, Sal=body; with soul (Gk. psyche) as the personality and spirit (Gk. pneuma) as the innermost Self.

Temperature, balance=rhythmic balance=rhythmically balanced interchange.

Ternarius, or number three in the language of Nature, the Divine birth in the six Forms of Nature, which are the six Seals of God.

Ternary, (called) Ternarium Sanctum, holy Flesh or holy Substance, or Corporizing of Angels and holy Souls.

THE THREE PRINCIPLES,

1st Principle – Dark World - desire, or will

2nd Principle – Light World - pleasure, or delight

3rd Principle – Fire World - proceeding, or outgoing

1st Principle, emanating from God the Father: darkness, wrath, jealousy, anguish, masculine/active, knowledge.

2nd Principle, emanating from the Son: light, love, meekness, friendliness, joy, feminine/receptive, wisdom.

3rd Principle, emanating from the Holy Spirit: the external world of stars and elements, in which good and evil, light and darkness are mixed and the Three Principles overlap and interpenetrate all Creation.

The First Principle is Hell, the Second Principle is the Kingdom of Heaven.

Heaven and Hell are not places, but states, and exist everywhere.

It is only in the second principle that God is called God. The first principle, the Eternal Nature, is not-God. A thing can only be known by its opposite. It is by the first principle that God differentiates himself so that he can be known, and know himself.

The Father apart from the Son would be a “dark valley,” but He is illuminated by the Light of the Son and thus in the Second Principle He is a God of love,

compassion and forgiveness, our Heavenly Father; and only according to this Principle is He called God. Therefore the Apostle can say, “God is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all.” In the First Principle He is not called God, but a “dark consuming fire.”

There is no Father apart from the Son, therefore anyone attempting to approach “God” apart from the Son approaches him in the false imagination, and will not find Deity, but only the wrathful consuming fire of the First Principle.

All three Principles reside in humanity, since we, created in the image of God, are triune beings. Our correspondence with the Trinity is not, as conventional theology teaches, “spirit, soul and body.” Our bodies are not part of our essential selves, but vehicles of manifestation in the material world, which we will one day discard, just as the material world is the “body” of Deity. This is neither pantheism nor panentheism. Nature is the body of God, the vehicle of his self-manifestation, and is no more a part of His Essence than the human body is the real “I.” At the time of the end, God will set nature aside like a garment. (Ps. 102:25-26; Heb. 1:10-11)

In The Three Principles 7:21-23 – JB describes how all three Principles are manifest in human nature:

21. The Source of the Darkness is the first Principle, and the Virtue of the Light is the second Principle, and the Out-Birth out of the Darkness by the Virtue of the Light, is the third Principle; and that is not called God: God is only the Light, and the Virtue of the Light, and that which goes forth out of the Light is the Holy Ghost.22. You have a Similitude of this in yourself. Your Soul which is in you, gives Reason to you, whereby you think, consider and perceive; that represents God the Father: The Light which shines in your Soul, whereby you know the Virtue or Power in you, and lead and direct and order yourself with; that represents God the Son, or the Heart, the eternal Power and Virtue: And the Mind, in which the Virtue of the Light is, and that which proceeds from the Light wherewith you govern your Body; that represents the Holy Ghost.23. The Darkness that is in you, which longs after the Light, that is the first Principle; the Virtue or Power of the Light which is in you, whereby you can see in your Mind without bodily Eyes, that is the second Principle; and the longing Virtue, that proceeds from the Mind, and attracts and fills, itself, from whence the material Body grows, that is the third Principle. And you may understand…how God is the Beginning and the first Virtue in all Things; and you understand, that in this gross, earthly body, you are not in Paradise. For that is but a misty, excrementitious, dusky, opaque Procreation, or Out-Birth in the third Principle.

Tincture, is in Angels and Glorified Saints the Virgin Love-fire. The power and virtue of fire and light is called tincture; and the motion of this virtue is called the holy and pure element. In Man that which Adam’s fall caused almost wholly to disappear. In Vegetables, Animals and Minerals, their Virtue, Vitality, or Life, Spirit and Power. The tincture is the power and virtue of fire and light. The motion of this power is called the pure element. And in this place or working God calls himself a loving, merciful God, according to the sharpened fiery burning love of the Unity; and an angry jealous God, according to the fiery ground, according to the eternal nature.

Trinity, God the Father is Thought. God the Son is Word. God the Holy Spirit is Action.

God the Father is Fire. God the Son is Light. God the Holy Spirit is Heat.

God the Father is Power. God the Son is the outgoing radiant Energy. God the Holy Spirit is Phenomenon.

God the Father is Innermost. God the Son is Inner. God the Holy Spirit is Manifestation.

God the Father is Ocean. God the Son is Wave. God the Holy Spirit is the Wave breaking on the shore.

God the Father is Spirit. God the Son is Soul. God the Holy Spirit is Body.

God the Father indwells the innermost spirit. God the Son indwells the soul-personality. God the Holy Spirit tinctures the body. “I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh.”

The Father is Ethos. The Son is Logos. The Spirit is Pathos. The Age of the Father, from Moses to John the Baptist, was the Age of Law. God the Son is Logos—word, logic, system. The Age of the Son was the Age of Reason. The advancement from the first century to the twenty-first was spectacular; from myth to science, slavery to universal suffrage, monarchy to democracy, tribalism to one human family, patriarchy to equality. Now Reason has reached the end of its tether. The Age of the Holy Spirit is the Age of Vision.

Turba, is taken for a fierce wrath-fire which destroyeth the corruptible body, Sometimes for Horrid Tempests or Hellish Blasts, general Contagions, awakened by common Sins, called Turba Magna.

Wisdom (see “Sophia”) is the outflown Word of the divine power, knowledge, and holiness; a reflection (Gegenwurf) of the infinite and unsearchable Unity; a substance wherein the Holy Spirit works, forms, and models. Wisdom is the passive, and the spirit of God is the active. Wisdom is the Great Mystery of the divine nature, for in her the powers, colors and virtues are manifest; in her is the variation of the power, namely, the understanding. She is the divine understanding, the divine contemplation, wherein the Unity is manifest. Word: The first manifestation of the triune Unity is the eternal Word, the outspeaking of the divine power and virtue. The first outspoken substance is the divine Wisdom, the cause of separability and forming.

N.B. –

It is written, The natural man receives not the things of the spirit, nor the Mystery of the kingdom of God, they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them: therefore I admonish and exhort the Christian lover of Mysteries, if he will study these high writings, and read, search, and understand them, that he does not read them outwardly only, with sharp speculation and meditation; for in so doing, he shall remain in the outward fantasy ground only, and obtain no more than a counterfeit color of them. Clavis 1:1

“Therefore man, who is so noble an image, having his ground intime and eternity, should well consider himself, and not run headlongin such blindness, seeking his native country afar off from himself,when it is within himself.” CLAVIS 178